Gift Ideas for Beer Lovers

Most beer gift baskets are pretty great. I mean, what beer lover doesn't want to receive beer as a gift? But this one is extra great. Between the presentation in a cool wood crate, the top-notch selection of beer tasting kits (which you can pick or go with the default Firestone Walker selection of four bottles), and yummy snacks (again, which you can pick or go with the default selection), the gift features a wood tasting paddle with four tasting-size glasses. It's a great way to experience a tasting kit, or share it with a friend.

Every gift from The Bro Basket comes with a free greeting card and a bottle opener.

The Craft Beer Club makes beer gifting easy. Choose exactly how many shipments you want and stay within your gift budget. Each monthly Craft Beer Club selection is produced by small-production, independent artisan craft beer brewers who use traditional brewing ingredients with creative techniques and time-honored brewing methods to create their brews. They feature 2 different craft breweries, located states apart, 4 different craft beer styles with three of each. Three times a year we feature cans so they can take their beer to the beach or park.

Each shipment includes 12 beers from breweries that have limited distribution and awards as listed in our “Micro Brew News” monthly beer club newsletter. All gifts include a free 1-year subscription to Beer Connoisseur Web Magazine (a $15 value) which includes 6 issues, Beer School, Expert Beer Reviews, Member Forums, and more.

For some, the act of drinking beer rises above “what you do on a Friday night” and is a full on hobby. These beer drinkers often read about beer online, frequent sites like Beer Advocate and RateBeer, have the Untappd app on their phones to track the beers they drink, and most importantly, make a habit out of finding and trying new beers to drink whenever possible.

Some of these craft lovers engage in beer collecting and trading (just like Baseball or Pokemon cards, except beer doesn’t last forever) and even beer tourism, travelling anywhere with a significant beer scene or at least checking out the local breweries whenever they’re out of town.

If these habits and words sound familiar, you’re buying for a Craft Beer Lover. Believe it or not, there are definite subsets within Craft Beer Lover, and each would likely prefer a different type of gift. Here are some more details to help you figure out which type of Craft Beer Lover you’re buying for.

IPA and other hoppy beers in every shipment, because some folks just really love IPA and only IPA. It's for people who love IPA. This is the ONLY beer of the month club on the market which ships only IPA (or other hoppy beers — hoppiness and it's typically-attendant bitterness are the reason IPA lovers love that style so much). We think everyone should get what they love.

You likely already know if your favorite beer drinker only drinks IPAs, as it’s the only beer they talk about. They only order IPAs (or Imperial, DIPA, and ESB variations) at bars and restaurants.

Much of the appeal of IPAs comes from intense bitterness and showcasing different types of hops, which impart different flavors to the beer. IPA drinkers tend follow a predictable continuum during their IPA discovery: find a few favorite IPAs, seek out more unusual IPAs that are more bitter or offer different secondary flavors, and then look for the highest IBUs available and stick with that.

Tavour is a beer subscription service to make any beer lover go bananas. They scour the country looking for amazing beers and each day they surface a few via email and their phone app. If your beer lover finds something they want, they add it to their monthly box. At the end of the month they receive a box of goodness full of the gems they discovered all month long. It's a truly engaging beer experience — the writing is excellent, the beers are generally fascinating, and it's a daily thing (if they want it to be).

When it comes to craft beer, nearly every town in America has at least one brewery. But when you look at a map of where craft breweries are concentrated, it's hard to miss the thousand+ located in California. National favorites like Anchor Steam, Stone, Sierra Nevada, and Ballast Point all come together in this beer gift. Six bottles total are accompanied by made-in-California snacks and presented in a wooden tray that's easy to use to hold keys and other small stuff.

Often beer gifts are marked up and sometimes feel like the prices aren't fair. This gift stands out as being exceptionally priced and is a great value for a fun beer gift.

Many craft beer lovers enjoy discovering new beers just as much as they enjoy drinking them. They have a curious palate and jump on new beer trends, so they’re quick to order something they’ve never heard of just to check it out. They try new breweries and styles all the time, so last month’s favorite has probably already been replaced with a new hot brewery or beer, or a seasonal beer made in small batches and only available for a short time.

These are brewer’s favorite beer drinkers because they appreciate that beer is about more than one style, more than one kind of beer drinker, and they give the brewer’s license to experiment (brewers are really just mad scientists who drink their creations).

Most beer lovers agree that nothing is better than beer on tap. Unfortunately that usually limits them to local beer and widely distributed beer — not great for the craft beer lover who wants to try new beer all of the time. Previously the best way to get beer on tap at home was to purchase a Kegerator (a refrigerator modified to hold a keg) and commit to one kind of beer for several weeks. Not any more!

THE SUB ® is a countertop appliance that delivers fresh beer via 2L Torps (short for torpedos, which of course go on submarines).

Hopsy is changing the way beer is enjoyed by connecting local breweries directly with local beer lovers. They partner with award winning local craft breweries.

Each 4-pack includes 4 different growlettes, hand picked to showcase the the variety and quality of beers Hopsy has to offer, and is backed by their 100% no questions asked money back guarantee. Choose from: Hoppy Pack, Dark Pack, Light Pack, or Customer Favorites.

This is a special deal just for Beer Clubs & Gifts shoppers, so get your $30 savings today. Maybe even buy one for yourself,
too!

You may be familiar with a movement which encourages folks to buy local (locally-made goods are good for the local economy and jobs), eat local (farm-to-table restaurants source ingredients from within 100 miles of where they’re located), and drink local (this applies to both wineries and breweries).

For some beer drinkers, their local brewpub is the most important “third place” (an urban designer’s word for somewhere that’s not home or work) and they are fiercely loyal to the beer produced in their neck of the woods. These are perhaps the most specific type of beer drinkers and when you buy a gift for this type of beer drinker you need to keep their locavorism in mind.

A Kegerator is a specialized refrigerator that holds one or more beer kegs. There are several different manufacturers and dozens of models to choose from. We've picked this one to suggest as a gift for three reasons.

The company that produces this beer bottle opener is awesome. In addition to using the highest quality woods and engraving techniques, Artificer Wood Works puts an emphasis on sustainability and plants a tree for every product ordered. The opener itself is magnetic, which holds the cap in place after it has been removed from the bottle, making cleanup even easier.

Choose an existing design, prices range from $49-59, or create your own custom design for $99. If you're ordering in bulk (for groomsman gifts or corporate gifts), the price drops the more you order. It goes as low as $30 each for orders of 200 or more.

Like most other hobbies, there are enthusiasts and there are do-it-yourselfers. Homebrewers are the do-it-yourselfers of the beer world, and they come in many assorted flavors. Some things they all have in common are: an insatiable need to know the process of how each beer is made and what ingredients go into each beer, time on their hands which allows them to make beer, and a need to show off their creations (there are festivals and contests for homebrewers all across America… not unlike Chili Cook-offs).

We think homebrewers roughly fit into three subcategories: Newbies and Wannabes, Beer Geeks who brew for themselves, and Aspiring Brewmasters who want to share their homemade masterpieces with everyone they know. Here’s a bit more about of each of them to help guide your gift-giving.

Homebrewing is the pinnacle of beer geekery. Once you've become a connoisseur of beer, the next step is often brewing your own, because the lure of always-fresh beer is strong. Many beer lovers dream of homebrewing, of tweaking recipes until they make the magical elixir that tastes perfect to them, but the reality of homebrewing is that it's quite complicated and time-consuming. If there's anything we're all short of these days, it's time.

There are so many homebrew starter kits out there that it might be tempting to shop by price or to choose who advertises the most, but most of these home brew kits will disappoint after a couple of batches. There's nothing wrong the kits themselves, and each kit has its pros and cons, but what separates these kits from each other for us is what kind of beer you can make in them.

Technically you can make any kind of beer you want in any homebrew setup. What we've discovered though is that the beer kits available for smaller fermenters produce merely okay beer. If your beer lover wants to brew his or her own beer using brew kits from well-known breweries, they'll find they're pre-measured for 5-gallon fermenters. If your beer lover is not a mathematician, then that might get challenging (like splitting a recipe that serves six into recipe for two).

For this reason, we recommend the BrewDemon 6-gallon kit (the extra gallon is neither good nor bad, it's just how they sell them). Especially for IPA-lovers. They'll be able to buy beer ingredient kits for famous beers like Pliny the Elder and Firestone Walker DBA.

Maybe your beer lover is a homebrew wannabe… they’re knowledgable about beer and would like to make their own, but have some legitimate concerns that prevent them from getting started. These might be a perceived lack of brewing ingredient and equipment knowledge, lack of space, lack of time, lack of access to proper supplies, or any combination therein. Fortunately for these folks there is a whole world of “getting started in homebrewing” out there, including equipment kits, recipe kits, space-savers, and even a machine that does everything for you.

For those who have already made the leap into homebrewing — maybe they’ve produced a batch (or two or ten) — there is practically unlimited need for more homebrew stuff, whether it’s better or more equipment, more creative supplies, ways to store their creations, or even just inspiration. Depending on how sophisticated your homebrewer is, it’s possible they’ve even been converted into a total beer geek (we’re sorry to inform you, the condition is incurable).

Imagine a mashup of Dr. Frankenstein (mad scientist) and a craft beer lover, where instead of creating monsters and making them come alive, your favorite homebrewer is contemplating the ingredients for the wort, picking yeast for its fermentation abilities, figuring out which beers are going in the kegerator, etc.

Yeah, we didn’t follow along with much of that either, but that’s the point. Geeks are on their own level and they need a beer gift suitable to all that geekery. In general we don’t advise buying beer or beermaking equipment for beer geeks, instead we recommend ways to help them acquire more beer knowledge and gift cards so they can go buy what they need. While gift cards are often a gift of last resort, they are the best gift you can give a beer geek homebrewer.

Some home brewers are a little less geeky about the whole homebrewing business. It’s a hobby, it’s fun, it gives them a chance to show off something they made from scratch and get positive feedback (hopefully) from their friends and family. These folks are more likely to enter homebrew competitions, name and bottle their creations, and bring them out into the world. Sometimes they host beer parties where they load up two or three kegs with their own creations. They love beer, love to talk about beer, love to make beer, and want the world to know it.

So, if they’re not a Homebrewer, and they’re not a Craft Beer Lover… what are they? Well, if you’re still planning to buy them a beer gift, odds are good their preferred drink is beer, they like to socialize with beer, they stock up on beer for home, and they probably even have a favorite beer that isn’t necessarily a craft beer.

According to the Brewers Association, a craft brewer is a small, independent, and traditional brewery. Since their definition of small includes up to 6 million barrels of beer produced each year, you might find it hard to tell which beers are actually craft beers and which are just regular beers, and you would be in good company. Here are a couple of different types of Lovers of Other Beers to help narrow your gift search.

Anchor Brewing is California's oldest craft brewery, and Anchor Steam was first brewed in 1896. This is a special beer that defies categorization because of its unique style. It's a dark amber beer with a rich malty flavor and is a terrific beer for drinking (as opposed to just looking pretty in the refrigerator).

This gift has six bottles of Anchor Steam beer paired with delicious snacks and comes packed in a galvanized steel tub with handles (hint, it makes a great ice bucket for beer).

Many, many beer drinkers have a favorite, a go-to, a beer they prefer above all others. Some make a lifelong commitment to such beers, and others just don’t want to be bothered with thinking about which beer they’re going to drink.

The best US and International beers come together in this adventurous beer club. It gives your favorite beer lover a little bit of everything with half of the shipment focused on American craft brews and the other half exploring an eclectic mix of world beers. Fit for the beer explorer, this club won’t disappoint.

To give you a better sense of the truly global scope of this beer club here is a list of the countries that have been featured since 2010: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, England, France, Germany, Ireland, Jamaica, Mexico, Poland, Scotland, Slovakia, Spain, Sri Lanka, Turkey, and United States. Half of the beer selections are from the United States and the other half are imported with an emphasis on German beer and Belgian brews because of the rich beer-making traditions in those countries.

We have a soft spot for these beer drinkers that will drink whatever’s around because, quite simply, they like beer. All of it. They’re easy to shop for, they’re not picky so anything you get them will be more than they expected, and we’re pretty sure most of the beer paraphernalia available for purchase caters to these beer drinkers. Your best bet when buying for these lovable, flexible beer drinkers is to stick with your own budget and pay attention to when the gift needs to arrive.